


a crown your head to hold

by Yuu_chi



Category: Class (TV 2016)
Genre: M/M, Mentions of Charlie as a survivor of genocide, Mostly sleepy fluff, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 02:23:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8603500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuu_chi/pseuds/Yuu_chi
Summary: “Do you know,” Charlie says, “on my planet, you might have been a King.”





	

“Do you know,” Charlie says, one evening as the both of them lie  in bed, curled close into one another’s space, “on my planet, you might have been a King.”

Matteusz, who had been half an inch off sleep, barely catches it. “Would I have?” He asks tiredly.

Charlie makes a sound under his breath, runs a hand through Matteusz’s hair. “Well, you’d have been Consort to the Prince first, and then to the King once I took the throne. But eventually - eventually you’d have sat at my right hand, a crown of your own.”

That pulls Matteusz back from the edge of sleep he’d been chasing. _Really?_ He wants to say. _Really? You want to have this conversation now?_

It’s been a long day. There had been aliens again, and more blood and death. Just another day in this strange mess that has become his life, he guesses. But never something he wants to become used to, never that.

Reluctantly, he opens his eyes, but any willingness to humour Charlie disappears when he catches sight of his face.

It’s … wistful. Lost. And so very sad. There’s just enough moonlight seeping in Charlie’s big windows to highlight all the creases in his frighteningly human face.

It’s an expression that he’s seen on Charlie’s face more than he’d ever care for. He gets distant, lost off in space; in a world that is all but ash, full of trees and grass and people Matteusz would never get to meet.

It’s too heavy an expression to wear so often, and he worries the weight of it is going to drag Charlie down one day, down to somewhere Matteusz can’t reach.

“Hey,” he says, rolling over in bed and reaching up to wrap a hand around Charlie’s bicep. He tugs until Charlie slips down beneath the covers again, close enough that Matteusz can press his lips to his forehead. “I would make _terrible_ King. I can barely manage _you_. And you are _one_ person. Would never trust myself with an entire planet.”

Charlie huffs out a small laugh. His eyes are fond, less empty now, and as he smooths a hand down Matteusz’s face, he considers that a victory. “You’re kind,” Charlie says. “That is a trait I’m beginning to feel we may have used more of on Rhodia. You humans are so…”

“So?” Matteusz prompts.

“Moral,” Charlie decides. “You’re always so conflicted - what is right, what is wrong. What it is to be kind or evil.”

Matteusz wiggles his eyebrows. “And Rhodians are not?”

Charlie’s smile slips, just a little. “ _Were_ ,” he corrects. “There are no more Rhodians to be anything, anymore.”

“This time, you are the one who is wrong.” Matteusz catches Charlie’s hand, drags that down to place a kiss at the heel of his palm. “It seems that I have one right beneath my hands. Can’t all be gone.”

“I’m one person, not an entire species.” Charlie doesn’t snap, he rarely does, but there’s irritation there where it hadn’t been before. “I can’t…” he huffs. “It’s not…”

Matteusz takes pity on him, can’t stomach hearing Charlie stutter and stammer about his lost people, and what that makes him. “Hey,” he says again, elbowing him to get his attention. “Tell me again how I would be King?”

Charlie quietens and Matteusz allows himself to sling an arm around him and drag him in so that Charlie’s face is buried in his shoulder. “It’s not like here,” Charlie murmurs, breath hot on Matteusz’s skin. “On Rhodia, we didn’t have this - discrimination. Before my parents took the throne, there were two Queens.”

That makes Matteusz smile. “I bet they were lovely.”

“They were my Grandmothers,” Charlie says. “Of course they were lovely.” He goes quiet again, then, “one of them died of old age, and the other stepped down to allow my parents to take over. She died, too. In the invasion.”

Matteusz never forgets, exactly, that Charlie is the sole survivor of genocide, but it is a reality that is almost too big for him to grasp. He can’t fathom how that much history, that much misery, can be contained in somebody as small as Charlie.

“Your parents,” Matteusz says hesitantly. “What would they think of me? As I am. Human. Not how I would be on your planet, as one of your people.”

Charlie doesn’t answer immediately. That is all the answer Matteusz needs.

“Ah,” he says. “I shouldn’t -.”

“No,” Charlie says, and he sits up again, pushing away Matteusz’s arm but taking his hand immediately after. He gives it a squeeze, and stares earnestly down to meet Matteusz’s eyes. “My parents, they would not have approved because you wouldn’t have been the diplomatic choice, not because you are _you_. I told you once before - affection on my planet is a bargaining tool, not … an emotion.”

“They would have picked you out a husband?” Matteusz asks.

Charlie frowns, his thumb skating over the back of Matteusz’s hand. “No,” he says. “It would have been expected that I’d know the stock from which to pick my own.”

An unpleasant thought occurs to Matteusz then, and he wonders why it never hit him before. “Did you…” He clears his throat. “Did you have somebody in mind? Before… _before_.”

“Yes,” Charlie says, and Matteusz’s heart sinks for a second, but Charlie continues, “but as a diplomatic choice. Not…” He seems to run short on words again. He looks down at Matteusz and the smile he gives is almost rueful. “Not as what I have with you. Matteusz, I could never have expected you in any dreams for my future, and yet you _happened_.”

“Would you choose me over your diplomatic choice?”

Charlie’s hand settles over his chest. “In a heartbeat,” he says seriously.

Charlie is not always good at words, Matteusz finds. He speaks English better than Matteusz, but the Rhodian culture does not always translate well into the Earth vocabulary. As such, Matteusz has long since learnt how to interpret all the little things Charlie says and does - to figure out the weight behind the meaning.

That declaration, coming from the Prince of a planet who had long since been raised to put his people above himself, means _something_.

Matteusz smiles. He can’t help it. He gets that way about Charlie sometimes.

It’s just - nothing in Matteusz’s life could have prepared him for Charlie. He’s the third son in his family. The only expectations he’d ever been given in his life was that he would grow up well, marry properly, and have a nice family of his own; and he’d never even managed to meet those.

And here was Charlie; the tragic Prince of an alien planet gone to dust, and he’d fallen in love with Matteusz anyway. He didn’t know the odds of that exactly, but he figured they were astronomical.

But here the two of them were anyway. Cuddled together in a bed that had somehow become theirs, safeguarding a planet that shouldn’t be their responsibility, and talking about a future they never could have shared, like it ever would have been a possibility.

“I think,” Matteusz says, “that I may have been an okay King if I had been ruling with you.”

Charlie smiles at him. “I can’t offer you the throne or the crown,” he says. “I can’t offer you my planet, my people, or a future that is safe and secure. By the laws of your own planet, in most countries here, I can’t even offer to share with you my name.”

He rolls over, and Matteusz goes with it easily, placing his hands on Charlie’s hips as settles above him, hands framing Matteusz’s face. “But I can offer you myself, and whatever it is of that you might take.”

There are words other people might have to that, to such a declaration shared in a one single breath in the moon framed silence of their room, but Matteusz cannot think of any.

It’s so _big_.

“I was under the impression,” he says uncertainly as Charlie looks at him earnestly, “that I already _had_ you.”

Charlie’s eyes crinkle and a grin splits his lips. He leans in to kiss Matteusz, and Matteusz figures he must have said the right thing after all because Charlie can barely stop smiling long enough to keep their lips together.

“It is the same for me,” he says, when Charlie finally pulls away. “Whatever I’ve given up for you, I don’t regret it.”

“I know,” Charlie says, and its matter of fact, not smug in the slightest. He sighs, rolls off Matteusz just enough so that he might breathe and drops his forehead onto his chest.

“Are we… are we sleeping now?” Matteusz asks.

“Mmhm,” Charlie says intelligently.

“Oh thank god,” Matteusz groans. He skims a hand down Charlie’s back. “I’m here for whatever you need to talk about it, whenever you need to talk about it.”

Charlie, who has been getting better at picking up unspoken cues, says, “But?”

“But,” Matteusz admits, “let’s not do this in the middle of the night again, yes?”

“I’ll try,” Charlie says in that voice of his that means yes, he certainly will _try_ , but Matteusz shouldn’t hold onto any strong hopes that he’ll succeed.

Par for the course, Matteusz figures with a sigh as he lets himself ease back to sleep, when you fall in love with an alien prince.

 _King_ , he thinks to himself.

If they’re all like Charlie …

Well, there are worse things he could be.

**Author's Note:**

> i've very obviously taken liberties with a) canon material that doesn't have anything to dispute it yet, and b) how marriage and royalty works in Rhodian culture. there's a good post on tumblr explaining how titles would work for same-sex royalty, but Rhodia isn't earth, and I like the idea of joint Queens and Kings so here we are!


End file.
